IV
Once more old Hezekiah stayed his hoe
To squint at Eben. Silent, Eben scanned
A little roll of sheepskin in his hand,
While, row on dusky row,
Tall bean poles ribbed with dark the gold-pale afterglow.
The boy looked up: here was another land!
Mountain and farm with mystic beauty flared
Where Eben stared.
Stooping, he lifted with a furtive smile
Two splintered sticks, and spliced them. Nevermore
His spirit would go beastwise to his chore
Blinded, for even while
He stooped to the old task, sudden in the sunset’s pile
His radiant Herdsman swung a fiery door,
Thro’ which came forth with far-borne trumpetings
Poets and kings,
His fellow conquerors: there Virgil dreamed,
There Cæsar fought and won the barbarous tribes,
There Darwin, pensive, bore the ignorant gibes,
And One with thorns redeemed
From malice the wild hearts of men: there surged and streamed
With chemic fire the forges of old scribes
Testing anew the crucibles of toil
To save God’s soil.
So Eben turned again to hoe his beans,
But now, to ballads which his Herdsman sung,
Henceforth he hoed the dream in with the dung,
And for his ancient spleens
Planting new joys, imagination found him means.
At last old Hezekiah loosed his tongue:
“Well, boy, this school—what has it learned ye to know?”
He said: “To hoe.”
The Forum Percy MacKaye